Self-Indulgent Random (s6) Drabble
by Bone Dry
Summary: Drabbly, self-contained, self-indulgent episode inserts for s6. Spoilers up through 6x04. Take with black coffee.
1. Mattress

_Setting: a few weeks before "Valkyrie"_

It's quiet outside, like a few hours ago someone had thought to throw a big, cloth damper over all the world. But that's DC for you. More suburb than skyscraper. Sometimes all the space makes her feel vaguely agoraphobic, like the fact that she's no longer surrounded by The City, that she can't find a falafel truck or papaya juice to save her life is slowly driving her out of her mind.

She lays there in her bed, in the crappy mattress. One of the many acquisitions from the mass Ikea run she'd made on her second day of employment with the Bureau. She'd gone just after work and picked things without really caring, because stuff was stuff, and she'd brought everything that was important to her with her (well, almost everything). She regrets this mattress though. It's like sleeping on a piece of old foam, and no matter how much she adjusts she just keeps sinking into it, slowly being swallowed, absorbed into the lining. It reminds her of a thousand bad hotel rooms. It reminds her of the bed in her dad's cabin.

She stares up at the popcorn ceiling, willing something like sleep. When she'd last checked the clock it had read 12:43. That had been at least a half hour ago, but she can't bring herself to check.

Yesterday she'd fallen asleep on her couch with an open report over her chest. Despite the lasting crick in her neck, she's halfway convinced she slept better on it than she ever has on this miserable mattress.

She stares up at the ceiling, trying not to think about the mattress, trying not to think about anything. She thinks about Castle though, off somewhere in California. They'd talked a few hours ago. He's in San Francisco, she remembers. The land of hills and hipsters and a thousand thousand eco warriors, most of whom smell vaguely like marijuana, most of whom had gone raw for a month and made things like avocado key lime pie and walnut meatloaf before falling back onto burgers and artichoke dip. She smiles, thinking back to road trips from Stanford, all the way up the coast.

Good days. Gone days.

She thinks about Castle again. She thinks about that picture he'd sent her on his phone, his arm slung over the shoulder of his cardboard double.

She finally turns to glance at the clock. 1:39.

Groans. Does a quick subtraction. 10:39.

Her phone's on the nightstand. She reaches for it. Taps a few panels.

It rings once.

"Beckett," is the answer.

"Castle," is the reply. She wonders for the thousandth time why they haven't moved onto first names yet.

"Miss me already?"

She pictures him smiling into the phone. From the background noise, she suspects he's out somewhere, maybe at the hotel bar. "Nope," she says.

"Well, I do. Publicist is plying me with drinks, trying to get me to sign another four book contract."

"Four books, huh?"

"That's a lot of books."

"I'm sure your buddy Stephen King would disagree." For some reason she wonders if the author's going to appear at the wedding.

"Mm," he breathes into the phone. She stops thinking about Stephen King. "I thought you were going to bed?"

"I am in bed."

"What're you wearing?"

"Nothing," she grins at the lie.

"Were that I not in public."

It's her turn to exhale into the phone. "Were that you weren't."

Silence hangs between them. 2800 miles, joined by an invisible tether. The distance seems impossibly, absurdly far, like it's a lie they'd both chosen to subscribe to for a reason neither of them could remember.

"I love you," she says, not really thinking about it.

"I love you too."

She stares up at the popcorn ceiling. "It's really late here."

"I noticed."

"I should go."

"I wish you wouldn't."

She smiles again, but not so wide. "Yeah, me too."

It's quiet on the other coast for a beat.

"Good night, Castle."

"Good night, Beckett."

She draws the phone away, hits 'End.' Tosses it unceremoniously back onto her nightstand. It lands three inches from her service pistol.

1:44.

Outside, trees rustle. One lonely car passes.

She rolls over, sinks into the mattress. Her pillow smells like detergent. Her life is still in boxes.


	2. Ring

_Setting: "Valkyrie" (after he shows up at her place)_

They lay there in a tangle of limbs and sheets and pillows and sweat. The whole of the world has been reduced to this moment, condensed like a can of sweet milk.

"I thought you said you were going to finish."

"Hm?" she looks up at him, realizes she's been thoughtlessly rubbing a circle on his chest with a fingernail.

"Unpacking." He does a wide, encompassing sort of "look at all this crap" gesture.

And even though she's seen it all before, her gaze follows his hand. The painting of the woman on the bridge that used to be in her living room is leaning against the opposite wall, taking up half the space. Her closet's mirrored doors are pressed together, exposing its contents for all the outside world to see. Hangers are spilling out of a box shoved into a corner, just below a sagging rack of coats and blazers and jackets. Between the nightstand and the doors her cheap, sad little shoerack has been stuffed with stilettos and boots. On the left, one of the drawers in her chest of drawers is slightly open, and a single sock peeps out. Two boxes sit just beside it, both of which are half empty, both of which she's fairly certain contain kitchen supplies, though she hasn't checked in awhile.

She grunts noncommittally.

"Want me to help you tomorrow?"

"With what?" she asks.

"This," he does the gesture again. This time her eyes don't follow it.

She pushes up, looks down at him. Her hair slides down her shoulder and her chest, and his gaze takes a moment to reach her eyes. "No," she says. "I can think of better ways to spend our time."

He smiles appreciatively at her, and even in the dark she can just catch a wicked little twinkle in his eyes. His arm slips out from under her, and her skin prickles as she reaches toward her chest. Her brows crinkle when he stops short, catching her chain with a slight tug to the back of her neck.

"You're still wearing it here," he says.

She frowns as he fingers the rings. Even after all this time, there's something that feels vaguely violating about it, like he's thumbing through old diaries he'd found in some attic box. "Yeah," she says, pulling back automatically.

He lets go, and she reaches for the rings herself, catching them between thumb and forefinger. She rubs the polished silver as she has a million times before. The engagement ring is still a new and strange addition to her, tapping softly against her mother's old ring and her chest. She's only worn it a few times on her finger since the proposal. She can't wear it at work for the same reason she'd stopped wearing her mother's ring well over a decade ago – it would just be in the way, catching on everything, pressing sharply into her fingers whenever she drew her pistol. It's better and safer around her neck, hanging just above her wounded heart.

At the thought, her fingers slide down to her chest, and she rubs the scar. It pulls slightly, a little zap of electricity, like touching the monitor of an old CRT TV.

"Sorry."

She looks over at his voice. "For what?"

Before he can answer, she slides back down, lays her head on his chest, picks a point in space to stare at. He starts to stroke her hair after a second, and she blows out a long a breath, closing her eyes, feeling him breathe. It's been six long weeks since contact, and his presence feels achingly good, reassuring and solid. She can't help but entertain the wish that this moment never end, even as she feels the rings squished between her breasts.

"Castle," she says.

"Hm?"

She rolls to face him, and her fingers settle on his shoulder. "Thanks for coming."

He smiles, smooths some of the hair from her face.

"Even if you did break in."

The smile widens. "I used my key."

"Next time, call me first."

"Lesson learned. I'm far too young and handsome to die."

She flashes back to drawing her gun, finding his face in her sites. Feels something hard and painful uncurl in her heart, just under the scar. And then she pushes herself up again to find his mouth, seeking the warmth to burn it all away.

He still tastes like the chicken wings he'd told her he'd bought at the airport.

It's the best thing she's tasted in six weeks.


	3. Vigil

_Setting: Dreamworld (6x2)_

God she hates hospitals.

The whole place makes her skin itch, like it's crawling with a thousand tiny, black ants trooping slowly up her spine.

Her nose hurts. The doctor who'd looked at it on scene had told her it wasn't broken. She'd known that already, but it hadn't been her decision to see him. His touch had made her skin itch, like it was crawling with a million, fuzzy spiders sinking their fangs into her spine.

She leans back against the wall.

The hospital reminds her of the frozen section of a grocery store, of freezers, of the morgue, of other things. It doesn't look exactly like Bellevue, but to some degree every hospital looks the same, and as she stands there she falls back into a pit of unpleasant thoughts. She keeps remembering that first time she'd dragged herself off the bed after the nurse had finally left, because she'd needed to use the toilet and she would be damned if she would ask for help to do it. The world had gone bright, bright, impossibly white, tunneled to nothing, and she'd woken up on the floor, a nurse tugging her arm. There was no privacy in the ICU. Everyone had seen her fall.

She clenches her fist at the memory, grinds her molars.

This is the longest she's been in a hospital since she'd checked herself out. That was two years ago now.

It feels like two days ago. Less. Maybe two hours.

She looks up to glare at the windowed door. Money had bought Castle a private room. Threats and badge waving couldn't get her into it. They'd wanted her to wait in the waiting area, but no force on this earth could get her to leave the territory she'd claimed just outside ICU, not unless it was calling her inside.

Her nose hurts.

She grinds her teeth some more.

For the moment she's holding vigil alone. Castle's family are probably boarding their flight now. When she's not thinking about Bellevue she's thinking about Martha's voice in her ear, when she'd been forced to admit her lie, when she'd had to tell her that her son was okay now, but he was still unconscious and they weren't entirely certain when he was going to wake up again, and he was en route to Georgetown.

_How did this happen, Katherine?_

The last person who'd called her that had been her own mother, when they'd been angry at each other for one reason or another. She remembers that impulsive New Year's haircut, just a few weeks before her death, the electric blue dye. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time, but, then again, vodka makes everything seem like a good idea.

For some reason that's the thought that twists the knife, and a single, strangled sob barks out of her, something hot burning in her corneas. She swallows it, stuffs it down, glares accusingly down the hall, but if the doctors and nurses milling around heard it, they're not looking her way.

Clearing her throat, she shifts against the wall, brushing angrily at her eyes.

She wonders if this is her fault.

Her nose throbs. Something wet and sickly laps at her stomach, at the pit of her throat. She wishes she could be alone to release in peace. She wishes she didn't have to be here. She wishes they would just let her into the fucking room.

Again she imagines going in anyway. She's armed, a cop, a federal agent, a lover. No mere door or doctor could stop her. Unstoppable force versus a dozen, scattering, moveable objects.

But she doesn't move.

She can't seem to remember how.

It seems like several eons have passed since she was given any news.

Tears threaten, fight for every micrometer. Her vision blurs and she coughs back another sob. It's all just too much. Everything smells like antiseptic and chemicals and bleach and sick. She thinks of Castle lying unconscious on Reed's perfectly manicured lawn. She thinks of Bellevue and the thin, crinkling mattress. She thinks of dying, the Big Empty, found screaming at the end of a tiny piece of lead.

A door opens.

The doctor stands there, his hand still pressed against the metal panel on the door. She's standing so close to him he doesn't have to move past the frame for her to talk to him.

"How is he?"

"He's going to be fine."

Relief floods her soul, but she doesn't smile.

"I'd like to see him now." It's not a request.

The doctor frowns just slightly, but says, "Of course."

She opens the door next to him and goes through it without waiting. The ICU looks almost exactly like Bellevue's, but she knows he's not here. The sight makes her skin itch, like flesh-eating beetles are burrowing into her spine.

"Where?" she asks.

"Just this way."

She follows him through the ICU, down a hall, past white coats and blue scrubs and miserable, dying people. He stops outside a door, and she goes through it without waiting for confirmation, knowing it's the right room.

And then she freezes at the threshold, that old dagger twisting in her heart.

He looks worse than when she'd seen him last, disappearing behind ambulance doors. Like a corpse. And across the room, the heart monitor keeps it beat, the soundtrack to a hundred unpleasant memories. The whole of it is so unbearably drab and white and toneless, life made bloodless, the only color a small bouquet on the bedside table.

_I heard you were opening a flower shop..._

She stares at it, wonders who could've sent it.

Then she stares at him, wills him to wake up and say something smart-ass and stupid.

But he doesn't. And the silence continues to be punctuated by the heart monitor's steady beeping. She suddenly notices that the doctor's gone.

Exhaling, she moves from the door, helps it shut before moving to the nearest chair, which she picks up and sets quietly just beside him. She falls into it.

Her nose hurts.

She touches it absently, watching him breathe.

She listens to the heart monitor.

Feels her own pulse, tapping steadily in her throat.

Settles in to wait.


	4. Waves

_Setting: Dreamworld (6x2)_

The beeping eventually drives her out, if only for a few minutes. Just under her jaw, she can feel a sickly ball of bile pressing into her throat, and if she doesn't take a deep, steadying breath at least once every three there's a strong possibility that she's going to vomit all over the dull, tile floor. She keeps clenching her teeth to stop her chin from quivering, knows that grief-filled grin she'd seen on a thousand murder victim's families keeps flashing across her face.

She imagines her soul tied in with a hundred ropes, visualizes the sickness as a small, hard, green ball, and she imagines pushing it down to the bottom of her shoes. It's an old trick that she'd had to learn a long time ago, when she'd needed the pain stop, to keep herself in check.

Eventually she returns to his room, to watch him sleep some more. A nurse checks in a few times, but he's the only visitor. She sits there willing Castle to wake up, wishing more than anything for his touch, for his hot breath, to hear something stupid fall out of his mouth. Pain crashes over her in waves, timed to the rhythm of the heart monitor.

She keeps remembering Bellevue. Keeps remembering a hundred different mistakes.

She hates herself for leaving that picture behind. She hates him for taking it.

She hates the sound of the monitor, fantasizes about pulling out her gun and shooting it six thousand times. She used to fantasize about that back in Bellevue, but she hadn't had her service pistol with her then.

Her fingers itch just above her holster.

That small, hard, green ball keeps pushing toward the surface, and she keeps shoving it down.

"I'm sorry, Castle," she whispers. Sorry for a hundred half-realized things.

She's pacing when the door opens again, and she barely looks up, wondering with slight paranoia why they keep checking on him.

"How is he?"

Her stomach flips around, and that ball pushes to the top of her throat.

"He's, uh, fine," she says, exhaling hard. Grief floods her blood as Martha meets her eyes. She looks angrier than Beckett's ever seen her, and just beside her she spots Alexis, who's glaring at her with open hostility. For some reason she remembers the crisis at the bank, just before the explosion.

_Do you hear me? They're all I've got._

"They're saying he's going to wake up anytime now, so, ah..." her voice trails off lamely. "He's going to be fine."

Her hand itches to travel to the rings. She can feel them hanging there. She doesn't move.

Alexis is still glaring at her.

Martha is the first to step forward, and she stops beside the bed, looking down. The anger seems to wash away, and she glances at the heart rate monitor. Beckett watches, realizing with a dull pang that to some people- to normal people –the sound is probably reassuring. Alexis has only crept in a few feet, but she keeps away from the bed, like there's a wall in the way, like she's afraid of what she'll see if she gets too close.

"What happened?" she asks.

That question again. Confidentiality has glued her lips together, and she still doesn't know how much Castle told them.

"He was exposed to a poison," she says.

She can see a flash of rage in the young woman eye's at the sheer inadequacy of the reply. The private irony is that she can relate.

"Where?"

"I'm sorry, Alexis, I can't—"

"How? This has something to do with your case, doesn't it?"

She doesn't know what to say.

"Why are you okay but he isn't?"

"I wasn't exposed."

"You weren't with him?"

_I was standing in a dead man's apartment_. "No."

She glares at her, mouth quivering. Her slight frame seems to heave. "Is that really all you have to say?"

"I'm sorry," the back of her throat is hot and metallic, and when she swallows she tastes bile. "I am, I just can't..."

Alexis looks down, holds up a hand, clears her throat.

"I'm sorry."

She feels evil, standing there. She remembers all the people who've lied to her. She remembers Raglan and Montgomery, the sounds of the gunshots that killed them both.

"I forgive you, Katherine."

Both of them look around at Martha's voice. The older woman is standing there over her son, muted despite all her colors.

"I know that whatever happened, Richard is probably equally responsible for it. I know you didn't deliberately put him in harm's way." She looks up.

Beckett suddenly realizes she's hugging her chest with her arms, but she can't bring herself to let go.

"You should have told us something was going on."

"I know." The air is hot and choking, and she feels something white ripple through her in waves.

"I don't want to get another call from you like this, Katherine."

The use of her name rakes against her heart with steel nails. She remembers her own mother.

She imagines that small, hard, green ball again. She images wrapping it in burlap and shoving it down, down, throwing it hard against the bottoms of her shoes.

"Can you give us a moment?" Alexis says quietly.

Beckett looks at her, feeling stapled to the floor.

"Yeah," she says.

For a moment she zones, forgets what she's supposed to do, how to walk, how to breathe. The moment crystallizes into a drop of ice, but then for some reason she's moving toward the door as the air bellows in her ears.

"I don't blame you," she hears as she goes, and she stops, turns.

"I know Dad probably did this to himself," Alexis says. "He kept pushing after you told him to stop. I know this wasn't your fault."

She just looks at her for a moment, pain swirling like a vortex. "Thank you," she says. Her voice sounds throaty, foreign.

Alexis steps toward the bed.

Beckett pushes out the door.

The waiting room is on the other side of the hall. It seems like a thousand yards of thin air. She's numb. She'd left the ball in the room.

All at once she notices she's reached the doors. She goes through. Follows the tile to the carpet. Sound roars in her ears.

"Beckett."

She stops, slams back to reality.

Esposito and Ryan are standing there.

Just there, like suddenly they're all back in New York, like the last two months have all been some bizarre hallucination.

"Hi," she says stupidly.

"How is he?" Esposito asks.

She just stares at them, almost not believing they're there. It's been so long since she's seen them.

"Beckett?"

She blinks, clears her throat, "He's still unconscious, but he'll wake up soon."

They step toward her as one. She notices that behind them a young, 20-something kid has stood, is listening to them, but she can't bring herself to care why.

"What happened?" Ryan asks. "He was fine last we saw him."

She looks at them, glances around. "Follow me?" she asks finally.

They nod, brows creasing.

She turns. There's a more private room down the hall, where the staff had first tried to get her wait. She's going to tell them everything.

The pressure inside her bursts when she touches the door, sending a tidal wave of grief screaming through her blood. If they hear her breath hitch, they say nothing as they follow her inside.


	5. Gulf

_Dreamworld (2x02): shortly after where I stopped before_

The hospital sounds different from here, eerily quiet, like they'd moved into a partially soundproofed room. Outside the windows a few people mill around, the occasional nurse or doctor. A few minutes ago Alexis had pushed out the door alone to join that 20-something she'd noticed listening to them earlier. She'd realized just before they'd kissed who he is.

She feels numb. She'd flipped the cap and poured the pain away.

Her nose still hurts though. She rubs at it again.

Esposito and Ryan are still sitting there, as solidly and unequivocally as they would have been for her a few months ago. She'd realized as she'd illegally relayed the bullet points of the last two days how much she'd missed them. McCord is starting to get her, but she'd been through hell and worse with these two.

"I'm sure Castle will appreciate that you came up," she says.

"He better," Esposito replies. "Had to take the rest of the day off work. Rush to a flight we can't afford."

"Thank you," she says, and this time she's not talking for Castle.

"Well, at least here you can't hang up."

She colors slightly. "I'm sorry. Everything was falling apart."

He waves. "We're used to it."

She can think of a hundred different incidents he could be referring to.

"Do you like it here?" Ryan cuts through her thoughts. "DC, I mean?"

"Yeah," she shrugs. "Not much today, but..." she trails off, suddenly unable to remember what the hell it was she'd been doing here these last two months. She just keeps remembering those airsoft rounds hitting her chest like sledgehammers. Keeps remembering Castle dying on the green, green grass. "I've missed you guys," she admits, for no reason in particular.

"We've missed you too," Esposito grins at her, in that way that makes him feel like family.

"Yeah, even Gates does," Ryan adds. "Our case closure rate has fallen off a cliff."

"A very small cliff." Esposito holds up a finger.

"More of a hill, really."

"A gentle hill."

She snorts at them, leans back, brushes her fingers through her hair. It doesn't feel quite so hard anymore, so sharp. "Not sure if I should be glad or not."

"We're not either." Ryan exhales.

They slide away from the subject of her move. She asks about Jenny and Wallis the night shift detective who used to sit opposite her, about some other cops and current events. She wonders privately who's taken her desk, but doesn't ask. They ask about DC and her new life, her new partner. She doesn't tell them how much is still in boxes.

"I'll call more," she promises, though she knows she's said that before.

They talk about a few cases. One of them involves a scaffolding incident and an angry ex-con.

The numbness fades. Save the setting, save the fact that they now live hours apart, things almost feel like they were. She laughs with them over a story Lanie had apparently chosen not to share with her. They laugh about Gates and some issue with a new interdepartmental records system.

Then the door opens, and the doctor stops there, looking just as somber as he had before. The lightness fades. She looks at him, but says nothing.

"He might be waking up soon," he tells her.

Something heavy settles in her chest. She looks back at her two old friends.

"Go," Esposito says.

"We'll wait," Ryan adds.

"Thanks," she says, rising. She notices when she looks out the window that Alexis and the 20-something are gone, that Martha isn't there either. She doesn't know how long they've been sitting there.

She follows the doctor out, feels the sickness creep back, but she pushes it away. She tells him she'll find the way herself. Her nose still hurts.

When she pushes the door open again, everything is as she'd left it, though now the 20-something is in the room too. He's the only one to smile at her when she enters, moving away from Alexis and toward her. She immediately finds his presence vaguely irritating.

"You're Kate, right?" he asks.

"Yeah," she says, looking at Castle. She'd hoped to find him awake, but he's still out somewhere.

"I'm Pi," the 20-something continues. "Like the movie, not the dessert."

"Mm," she grunts, moving past him to the chair she'd pulled up earlier. She stops just next to it, still staring down at her lover, willing him to just open his eyes.

Far away, she hears Alexis say something quietly to Pi the-movie-not-the-dessert.

"He always did want to lead a life of adventure," Martha says after a beat, just over the sound of that incessant heart monitor.

"So he's told me," Beckett replies.

She looks up at her, but if there's a second part to the statement, she doesn't voice it.

After a beat, Beckett sinks back into her chair, and after another she reaches forward, plucks at his hideous blue gown, touches his hand, leans against the plastic barrier.

Wonders how much longer she'll have to wait.


	6. Buttons

_Setting: Need to Know (6x03)_

The drive across Brooklyn is made in tension, like there's a rubber band stretched taut between them, and if either one of them says anything it's going to snap and sting both their faces.

So Beckett says nothing,nervous in the kind of way she remembers feeling years and years ago on first days of school, when she would wonder what had happened to the spaces she'd left abandoned for months, to the school friends and acquaintances whom she hadn't spoken to since summer break. She pulls at the end of her blue blouse, unbuttons her blazer. This is far deeper than her feelings back in elementary and high school. She'd spent almost a decade of her life at the 1-2. She'd slept, dreamt, cried, and laughed within those walls. She'd killed Dick Coonan there. Processed Mike Royce. Sought sanctuary from the ghosts howling on her shoulders. It had been and, to some degree, still is the central grounding point of her life— the one constant as she had tumbled down the path of her mother's case, after she had lost to a serial killer's bomb the first apartment she'd ever bought instead of rented, as men had drifted in and out of her life, as she'd healed from the bullet to her heart. It's home, and she hasn't been back to it since she'd left.

She rebuttons her blazer one-handed. Stares at a bumper sticker.

_Guns don't kill people. People kill guns._

Of course, her past relationship with the precinct is precisely why she and McCord have been selected to sweep into it. Villante assumed she'd be happy with the chance to work with her old people again, that it would be advantageous in getting them to be open with her. All she could think of as she'd left the office to find McCord was Jordan Shaw and Mark Fallon and Jared Stack and a half dozen other federal agents, the deep feelings of territoriality they'd stirred in her, the times she'd actively worked under and despite them. She thinks of that again now.

Lets out a breath.

"Everything alright?" McCord asks. The band snaps, and Beckett recoils from it, glancing at her before quickly looking back the road.

"Yeah," she says, swallowing. "It's just weird."

"Going home?"

"It's not really home anymore." She taps the wheel with a fingernail, switches lanes. "Mind if we don't talk about it?"

"Sure."

She smiles slightly, almost wanting to thank her for that, but she says nothing, and the smile fades.

Trees and taxis and the brick buildings of Brooklyn go by. She's been unconsciously straining for the skyline ever since exiting onto the Long Island Expressway. Three long months away.

She taps the gas a little harder, drifts over to another lane, exchanges honks with another driver. Trepidation doesn't quite outweigh the want to return, to be within the city again.

She thinks about Castle. It's been a few weeks now since he was discharged from Georgetown, since she'd left him at Reagan with a kiss at the hangar, having abused her badge to get past TSA and wait with him at the terminal. It had taken most of her energy to stop herself from following him onto that plane.

She hasn't touched him since.

She imagines using her key to sneak into his apartment, to surprise him there as he'd surprised her. Imagines him sliding off the blazer. Hands pulling on, ripping away buttons. Fingers scrambling for skin. There's something comforting in the fantasy, something that takes her away from the growing cloud of frenetic energy bouncing in her blood.

They pass over the tunnel.

And, suddenly, there it is in the distance. Manhattan, framed in the trees, made small by its distance, like the whole of it could fit on her thumb.

Something inside her snaps. She could almost cry in relief, but she doesn't.

Three long months.

Nervousness tickles her throat.

Three long months, and she doesn't know what she's returning to.

She glances at her partner, returns her gaze to the road.

Or how much she's changed.


	7. Break

_Setting: Need to Know (6x03); commence off the cuff rambling_

McCord's wandered off to pick up a slice at a pizza place (_"Might as well, while I'm in New York."_). Beckett had directed her to the best one that's within reasonable walking distance, declining the invitation to join her. She's not hungry.

She feels like a traitor, a rat. She stands in the conference room that just a few months ago she and her team would sometimes have taken over with take-out from the til-3AM Chinese place four blocks down the street. Memories haunt her like ghosts.

Her old friends won't meet her eyes. They'd moved away when she'd attempted an apology for her partner. She'd realized then that she's changed to them, that she's become one of the Other, an unpredictable, malevolent force in the precinct, best driven out.

She's safer over the phone, two hundred miles away.

She looks down at the little plastic stick in her fingers, turns it around and around.

Hits 'Send' on her phone. Slips it into a pocket.

She feels like a traitor, a rat.

Just holding the thing she's probably breaking six different laws. Somehow, she can't bring herself to care.

She thinks about a few of the cases that the feds or other cops had tried to toss her off. She thinks about Sophia Turner and other brief encounters with the CIA, some of them recent. She thinks about her mother's case, about Montgomery throwing up those invisible roadblocks. She thinks about Reed. She thinks about Bracken.

It makes her sick to think she's becoming one of them. Near physically ill.

There are precious few things she's fallen back on all these years, since the night her life was ripped apart by a phone call. One of them was her strength; another was her righteousness.

She's a traitor as she stands there, gripping that plastic stick. Traitor to herself, traitor to her past. Torn by old loyalties and one still forming.

And yet she'd copied the damn thing. She'd sat in that chair and typed in her high-security, 23-digit password, and she'd copied those files.

Esposito had given her a look as he'd walked by the conference room on his way to his desk. He'd had no idea what she was doing, and she hadn't told him, hadn't dropped so much as a friendly smile to indicate where her alliances still stand.

He's sitting at his desk now, pointedly not looking in her direction as he talks loudly with Ryan about "the feebs."

She sets her jaw, wraps the plastic stick in her palm, grabs her coat, pulls it off the chair.

No one looks her way as she passes, heading for the break room. She feels like an alien force, a fish swimming upstream.

The break room's just as haunted as the conference room, if not more so.

Old conversations drift through her thoughts. Days passed and gone. She looks at the photographs and the cut-outs taped to the wall, at the PSAs, at the coffee machine.

She glances out the doorway, at the bullpen. At the wreckage that's become of her desk.

The world had kept turning without her, and it would to continue to do so.

It's time for her to go, time to slink south as so many agents before her had. DC's pulling her off the case, and her business here is done.

Well, just about.

She looks down at that damn stick. Catches the light in the metal.

She's gone too far to pull back now.

And as she turns it over she still doesn't know if she regrets it.


	8. Cross

_Still Need to Know (6x03), coz I haven't wrung it quite dry enough yet apparently (and to think I had originally intended these drabbles to be the sugar to Ticking's blackness)  
By the way, thanks to everyone who's reading. I've been largely inactive for quite awhile now, so it's been nice to shove some writing back into my life._

The 12th precinct balcony looks out over a narrow street. There's no view to speak of, just a bunch of six or seven story buildings, though all are tinged by that vague familiarity of having walked or driven by them thousands of times. She looks down at the blue and whites parked below, listens to traffic sounds, ever omnipresent on the island.

She'd said goodbye to this place once already tonight, yet she'd been dragged away from the hotel bar she and McCord had settled into by a courtesy call from Captain Gates, who'd informed them that the NYPD were planning on picking up Svetlana Renkov in connection with the murder of Charlie Reynolds.

She'd hid a smile of pride behind her glass when McCord had looked away, feeling for the first time tonight like her old self, like someone who could sleep through the night.

That feeling's gone now as she stands there, a small breeze tugging her hair.

She thinks of the conversation she's just ended with Agent Ethan Wright of the CIA. The guy's a douche, utterly devoid of empathy for Svetlana or her grief. She could tell he's been in the business as long as McCord, if not longer, his feet so far off the ground he's long since forgotten what the pavement feels like. But Beckett hadn't gone into law enforcement to save the world, to hop between cities like a roving wolf, looking to fill her mouth with blood. Ever the idealist, she'd just wanted answers— for herself, for anyone else whose life had been ripped inside out by death.

Even after all these years she still sees herself reflected in the people left behind, in people like Svetlana Renkov. One blink and she can be back in that morgue, staring through the picture window, waiting for the doctor to lift the sheet.

_She'd gone there alone. She hadn't told her Dad where she was going. He hadn't wanted to see his wife like that, said the pictures would suffice. They hadn't been enough for her. She still didn't quite believe it, that she was truly dead, that the last thing they'd ever talk about was the class she'd registered for but was thinking of dropping._

She blinks again.

Gritting her teeth, she takes out her phone, stares at it with an angry sort of purpose.

Wright may be an asshole, a soulless man in black, but she has yet to stick a price tag on her conscience.

She stands there staring at the phone, tallying her sins.

The reality is she's damned either way, and there's a limit to what she can live with.

Exhaling, she recalls the phone number. Lisa Webb had been the least annoying of the parasites who'd once actively attempted to attach themselves to her investigations. She'd even done her a favor once in a blue moon— in exchange for information, of course.

She's the most obvious choice.

Beckett stares at her phone. She's already made up her mind, but she pauses before dialing.

If word reaches DC, that's it, she's done for.

And without a home to return to; with her desk claimed, her apartment sold... She glances over the edge of the precipice, studies the void below.

All she can see is Svetlana Renkov being cowed by a man in a suit, being shot in some back alley. All she can see is herself, crumpling against the cold, tile wall in grief as John Raglan looks on— the lying bastard.

She dials the phone. Lifts it to her ear.

It rings once.

"Kate," Lisa Webb says. "So nice to hear from you. I heard you moved to DC?"

"I'm back in town," Beckett says, staring grimly at the blue and whites below. "And I have something I think you might be very interested in regarding the murder of Charlie Reynolds."


	9. Drift

_Setting: before Number One Fan (6x04); I was happy to note last night that I've been Jossed (disruption in head canon aside), since Beckett still apparently has her "old place," and that's easily my favorite set; this kind of affects my theme development (am I even building one?), but I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who really cares about that._

_Anyway..._

It's Day Three of her entrapment at "Casa de Castle." She's lying in bed— the only zone in the loft that can even passingly be referred to as "safe" —listening to the distant clattering of pans. She doesn't have to peel herself off the bed to know the source: Pi (_the-movie-not-the-dessert_). She's really starting to believe his talk of Amsterdam is all some hallucination, a dream grasped in the dregs of a brightly-colored bong.

As she lays there, she remembers that she had found his presence vaguely amusing back in DC. He had reminded her of a guy she'd dated for three and a half seconds back in California, when she'd been feeling partially crushed under the weight of her workload and her job. She'd met Caleb... Something (Anderson? Ellis? Erikson?) in a café in Evergreen Park, where he'd been strumming some god-awful song that has long since been scourged from her memory. He'd had the intellectual capacity of a particularly bright cube of cheddar cheese, but his vague promises of a long trip up the coast or out of the country had seemed comforting at the time.

Of course, the guy had been a deadbeat, his future a series of tops he could never seem to get around to spinning. She'd dumped his ass when he'd appeared at her door one night reeking of pot, begging for the use of her couch. She never saw him or his guitar again.

She lays there on the bed, exhales low and long.

Maybe he finally did make it up to San Francisco.

Her thoughts slide to other matters.

After McCord's departure, she'd silently dragged her over-nighter into Castle's bedroom. Her past-self had thought to leave enough clothes here to last a week, and between that and what she'd scavenged from her old place down in Tribeca, she has just enough to last her until sometime next week.

Which of course means that unless she does laundry, by the end of that time she's going to have to deal with getting the rest of her stuff back from DC.

She stares up at the ceiling.

DC.

Thinking of it fills her with an empty sort of ache. Not pain exactly, but... she'd been growing used to the place, adapted to her new work station, started to build relationships with Hendrix and Richmond and Villante and McCord. It hadn't been the 12th (not that anything ever really could be), but it hadn't been awful either. The cord had been cut so cleanly she still hasn't quite absorbed it. If McCord hadn't stripped her of her badge and card, she'd' be half-tempted to check her phone for a message from the office. Again.

But the damn thing's mute. Just as it is from the 12th.

She groans and shuts her eyes, thinking back to yesterday's conversations. Having to explain to Gates— to Esposito and Ryan —that she'd been terminated had easily been the most professionally embarrassing incident of her life, even counting the crap she'd gotten into with Royce. And to then walk away with nothing, to come back to the flat to find Castle standing there expectant, having already bought the wine to celebrate her reinstatement...

God, she'd been tempted to turn on her heel and go lay down in the street.

She mashes her knuckles into her forehead.

Stupid, stupid, stupid...

She hears the click of a door, and she lets her hand fall from her face.

"Done moping?" Castle asks.

She fixes him with a look, bites back something hot and defensive. Lets out a "Nope."

He leans against the doorway, studying her with a sympathy whose sincerity is suspect at best. "Anything I can do?"

"No more than you could do yesterday, Castle," she says.

He sighs, then, after a beat, trudges inside. The bed compresses as he lies down just beside her.

"Want to talk about anything?" he asks.

"Not if it's about me," she replies.

He turns his head to look at her. "Want me to go get my laptop and read you some of my next great novel?"

She snorts, "Not if it's that Bruce Willis/Godzilla crap."

"I'll have you know that chickenwings4323 is a vital pillar of the Bruce Willis community."

"I'm sure your publisher would be thrilled."

"You mean 2tam2luv?"

She just looks at him, brows furrowing.

He laughs outright.

Despite herself, she feels a smile tug at her lips. That drives her up, and she exhales as she tosses her hair back, props herself on the comforter with both arms. For some reason she notices the banging from the other room again. "What the hell is he doing in there?" she asks.

"I don't know," Castle replies, staring up at the ceiling. "I closed the door, and the books blocked the view."

"I feel like we're being invaded."

"We have been invaded. Past tense." He runs a hand over his face. "If he offers me one more 'mango medley' or 'kale blast' or 'spinach swirl' I'm going to have to take drastic measures."

She tucks some loose hair behind her ear. "I thought he only eats fruit."

It was her turn to receive a look. "I'm starting to get seriously concerned that he's going to turn my kitchen into a juicer. I'm going to come home one day and find my living room furniture has been replaced with a tasteless arrangement of Swedish chairs."

"Not to worry, Castle, if things continue as they are, I'll be here to make sure your apartment isn't inundated with hipsters." Her tone isn't entirely not-bitter.

He groans, sits up. A long moment passes, and they just sit there shoulder-to-shoulder, staring at nothing in particular, some random point in space.

"If you could go back to last week— do it over with the benefit of foresight —would you?"

She glances at him. He'd asked her that before, that morning when she should've been sitting on a plane back to DC, but hadn't been. She'd sidestepped the question then, still feeling too shell-shocked to process it.

Now she shrugs. "Yes," she says, staring past him, "I would've covered my tracks better." After a beat, she she meets his gaze again. "I don't really want to talk about it."

"Okay."

The silence is punctured by more clanging, and something else, something new. After listening to it for a second, she realizes it's singing.

Pi...is singing...

Their eyes lock. Castle has a look on his face like he's just swallowed a live goldfish.

"Want to go get lunch?" she suggests.

He slides off the bed in an instant, "Don't have to ask me twice."


	10. Icepack

_Setting: Number One Fan (6x04)_

She reaches into the freezer, exchanges the bag of peas for a bag of mixed cauliflower, makes a mental note to remember to eat neither. Then she walks back over to the couch.

Castle is splayed out there, head on the armrest, one hand on his chest. He's staring at something held to eye-level, and his vest looks like it's slowly sliding off his knee.

The remains of their dinner litter the coffee table. She'd had chicken tikka masala, a somosa, and far too much na'an. He'd had shrimp curry and the rest of the somosas. She can smell the food on them, all around the loft. She knows she'd taste it on his breath.

She stops just beside him, and she can't help but glance at the vest again, at the little hole where it had stopped the bullet. She can just see the letters from here: 'WRITER' – an old, benign mockery she'd gradually grown used to. She'd seen it a thousand times in the trunk of her old crown vic, thrown in beside her own. To her it had always felt like a costume, like he was playing at what he'd like to be when he finally decided to grow up. Never in a thousand years would she have thought he'd actually need it, that it would save his life.

"Here," she says, holding out the bag of frozen vegetables, looking away from the vest.

"Thanks," he switches the thing he's holding to another hand, reaches out.

"What's that?" she asks, placing the bag in his palm. She walks around the arm and sits beside him on the shag carpeting.

He doesn't say anything until she settles, drawing one knee up as she curls the opposite foot under her.

"The bullet," he says, holding it up for her to see.

Something weird and cool washes through her, a wave of cold water. "You kept it?" she asks.

"Yeah," he says. He's still holding it out to her, and she realizes after a second that it's an invitation for her to take it.

Her mouth goes dry as she reaches for it. He drops it in her fingers, and she manipulates it slowly. The metal is warm, small, flattened, brass-ish. She rolls it around her palm, marvels anew at its harmlessness.

Yet, another inch higher, he wouldn't be sitting here.

Half a millimeter higher, and she wouldn't be sitting here either.

She realizes she's touching her chest, her pinky rubbing into the wool just above her scar. She drops the offending hand, gives him back the bullet with the other. As he takes it, she finds herself wishing she'd thrown it across the room instead, somewhere far, far away.

"Why'd you keep it?" she asks.

He shrugs, tucking the thing into a pocket. "Morbid impulse?"

She's not sure what to say to that. She's never seen the bullet that entered her chest, or, at least, the pieces they'd pulled out of her, though she does remember carrying around the rifle.

She remembers Javie telling her that the thing holds no magical powers over her, but she knows she'll never forget the weight of it in her arms, never forget that rush of adrenaline-fueled terror as she'd looked down the scope, imagining lining herself up in the sites.

And here's Castle sitting there with the vest and the bullet, his second brush with death in as many months.

Exhaling, she leans against the arm rest, runs her right arm under his neck in an awkward sort of half-hug. He places a palm over her upright knee, draws a circle there.

"Think you'll be throwing Sully off your desk?" he asks suddenly, out of nowhere.

"What?" she says.

"Tomorrow. Think Gates'll give you back your desk or are you getting relegated somewhere else?"

She just looks at him. "I have no idea."

"It'll be a shame if you don't get it back. So many memories."

"It's a slab of wood, Castle," she says, though somewhere internally, part of her almost agrees.

He shifts onto his shoulder with a grunt and a wince, turning to face her completely. His hand falls off her knee, drops to the carpet. Through his half-unbuttoned shirt, she can just spot something yellow and purple. The bag of frozen vegetables is sitting on the cushion just beside him.

"You happy to be back?"

She smiles, "Yeah." The smile fades as she reaches forward, pulls back the shirt to reveal the bruise. It seems larger than before, an angry, multi-colored splotch right over his heart. She touches it, and his skin is cold.

"That hurt?" she asks softly.

He shakes his head. "No. Just don't press down."

She nods.

And then he reaches for her, touches her in much the same place. His fingers send electricity down her skin, pull at the scar. Something silent passes between them.

"What a pair," he says after a beat.

She snorts, glances away.

"Hey," he says quietly, and she meets his eyes again. "Come here."

She leans forward, and his hand slides up, stops in her hair somewhere. When they kiss he tastes like curry, like something hot and alive.

She can feel the bag of frozen vegetables slowly melting against her chest. It doesn't quite hurt.


End file.
